The Metropolitan Opera’s Split Personality

The company lurches from a tacky “Semiramide” to a glorious “Parsifal.”

On the evidence of two productions that played at the Metropolitan Opera in mid-February, an opera lover from another planet might have concluded that two different companies were sharing the same space. The first offered an austerely hypnotic staging of “Parsifal,” in which singers not only did justice to Wagner’s monumental, cryptic score but brought it to shuddering life. The second unloaded a monstrously tacky version of Rossini’s “Semiramide,” one whose sets and costumes seemed to have been raided from a museum of theatrical kitsch, not excluding souvenirs of Liberace-era Las Vegas. Met No. 1 was cohesive and purposeful; Met No. 2 felt chaotic and hapless.

Such a juxtaposition is typical of the modern-day Met, which keeps lurching between a cumbersome past and glimpses of a more adventurous future. The “Parsifal,” a François Girard production that was first seen in 2013, is one of the finest achievements of Peter Gelb’s regime, fulfilling his goal of bringing a new level of theatrical sophistication to the house. But other efforts in that direction have fallen short, and have highlighted a stifling streak of conservatism in the Met audience. The fate of “Tosca” is a case in point. In 2009, Gelb retired Franco Zeffirelli’s lavishly appointed staging in favor of a stripped-down, would-be provocative version by Luc Bondy. Boos resounded on opening night, and donors made their displeasure known. Last New Year’s Eve, another “Tosca,” by David McVicar, went on the boards—this one traditional in style, though the sets were noirishly askew. Gelb told the Times, “I have learned my lesson from the Bondy production. When it comes to a classic piece of repertoire, beauty counts—and that’s what the audience wants.”

During McVicar’s “Tosca,” applause greeted each of the opera’s familiar Roman settings as it was unveiled. This was sad to hear. The Bondy “Tosca” may have flopped, but its intent was laudable. The Met cannot sustain itself by giving a superficially handsome veneer to works that should challenge us as much as they comfort us. The plot of “Tosca” involves torture, attempted rape, and murder. Those who are demanding a return to traditional stagings should ask themselves what kind of social message is being sent when such a scenario becomes a vehicle for opulent nostalgia. Fortunately, operagoers have shown more open-mindedness in other instances. Girard’s “Parsifal,” brooding and blood-soaked, is hardly a picture-postcard affair, yet it has transfixed large crowds. Robert Carsen’s version of “Der Rosenkavalier,” both grand and sordid in its vision of fin-de-siècle society, proved popular last season. The lesson to be learned from these productions is that audiences will venture far afield when they are decisively led.

“Semiramide” felt aimless not least because no one was really at the helm. The staging dates back to 1990, and had not been seen since 1993. John Copley, who directed the original, returned to oversee the revival, but was fired after making what the Met described as an inappropriate comment to a member of the chorus. Roy Rallo valiantly took over. Even if the ghost of Meyerhold had assumed command, though, there would have been no stopping the tawdriness. Rossini’s tale of the quasi-mythic Assyrian queen Semiramis is buried in feathered headgear, tasselled parasols, bejewelled scabbards, beauty-pageant crowns and sashes, and swaths of scarlet and purple and teal. The score is heavily cut. It’s almost hilariously atrocious—but the laughter dies in one’s throat, because the production demeans Rossini. All the work that has been done to rehabilitate bel-canto opera in recent decades—an effort guided by the revered scholar Philip Gossett, who died last June—is seemingly wiped away in a matter of minutes.

Angela Meade is one of very few contemporary sopranos who have the technique and the stamina to bring off the role of Semiramide, a proud and ruthless ruler who makes the tragic discovery that her fiancé is her own son. Meade first sang the part at the Caramoor Festival, in 2009, wowing cognoscenti with her immaculate coloratura and gleaming high notes. Since then, she has had several successes at the Met, notably as Norma. At the opening night of “Semiramide,” she was ill at ease in her early scenes: her showpiece aria, “Bel raggio lusinghier,” suffered from uneven phrasing, intrusive vibrato, and a constricted high E. After that, she sang with greater assurance and bite. No stand-alone diva, she is often at her best when interacting with colleagues: sometimes she soars above them, and sometimes she lets her voice melt into another’s, as in her final, maternal duet with the gifted young mezzo Elizabeth DeShong.

Javier Camarena portrayed the Indian prince Idreno. No Rossini tenor today has a more liquid legato or a more effortless reach to high C and above. Camarena may not match the stylistic intelligence of Lawrence Brownlee, who sang Idreno at Caramoor, but the pleasure this tenor takes in his voice is infectious, stirring memories of Pavarotti. As Arsace, Semiramide’s love object turned son, DeShong made her highest-profile Met appearance to date, following in the steps of the great Marilyn Horne. DeShong sang with preternatural loveliness of tone and nimbleness of execution, though not with Horne-like panache. The fast-rising bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green was stylish and stentorian as the high priest Oroe. The one odd piece of casting was of the physically imposing Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov as the villainous Assur: he skated over coloratura passages and tended to fade out at the lower end of his voice. He did, however, look convincing in breastplate.

Two different Met orchestras showed up during this Rossini-Wagner stretch. In “Semiramide,” under the direction of Maurizio Benini, the ensemble was surprisingly sketchy in places, missing the crisp snap that Rossini requires. But in “Parsifal,” under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the musicians made a uniformly glorious sound. Nézet-Séguin, who will become the Met’s music director next fall, is not the ideal conductor for this opera; he favors a brisk, clear-cut approach, and is not inclined toward Wagnerian mystery. At the matinée on February 17th, the Prelude to Act III lacked an eerie chill, and the dissonant climax of Titurel’s funeral music failed to induce shivers of awe. Still, I preferred Nézet-Séguin’s vitality to the grandiose, studied manner of Daniele Gatti, who led “Parsifal” in 2013. The performance humanized Girard’s postapocalyptic tableaux. It bodes well for the Nézet-Séguin era.

Klaus Florian Vogt sang the title role, his pure-toned, pale-bright tenor a welcome contrast to the pitched shouting one too often hears in Wagner. He captured the callow boy Parsifal of Act I, but was less suited for the maturing hero of Acts II and III. Peter Mattei and René Pape returned as Amfortas and Gurnemanz, the wounded king and the wise chronicler. Mattei’s soliloquies of agony were even more gorgeously piercing than they were in 2013. Pape, long an indispensable Wagnerian at the Met, has experienced some falling off in power, but his Gurnemanz was more vivid than before, exhibiting a pained, almost desperate edge.

In the end, though, this “Parsifal” belonged to the ferociously expressive German soprano Evelyn Herlitzius, making a belated Met début as Kundry. Herlitzius trained as a dancer before turning to singing, and it shows in the extraordinary flexibility and focus of her physical movement. She conveyed with uncommon vividness the various personas inhabited by Wagner’s undying heroine: the sleepless wanderer, the motherly companion, the agonized seductress, the remorseful seeker who once laughed at Christ. Spastic, puppetlike gestures evoked her subservience to the sorcerer Klingsor. Herlitzius’s voice is not conventionally beautiful, its steeliness verging on harshness, but it delivers the musical goods. In her mighty cry of “Lachte”—“I laughed”—she landed the vertiginous descent from high B to low C-sharp with athletic precision. In the final act, where she had only one phrase to sing (“To serve”), her portrait of spiritual devotion remained at the center of the drama. Girard conceives of Kundry not simply as Parsifal’s penitent servant but as the celebrant of the Grail. Too often, Kundry’s death, during the final tableau, seems incidental and unmotivated. Herlitzius, crawling toward Amfortas and then collapsing, made it the necessary, wrenching resolution. It felt as though a problematic masterpiece had been healed of its wounds. One can ask no more of a night at the opera. ♦

This article appears in the print edition of the March 12, 2018, issue, with the headline “Split Personality.”

Alex Ross, The New Yorker’s music critic since 1996, is the author of “The Rest Is Noise” and “Listen to This.” He will publish his third book, “Wagnerism,” next year.